I have had four dorade boxes from Vetus mounted for my deck ventilators. I looked at them when they were delivered and thought: “Strange that they make really sturdy ventilators and mounting bases, but then put a crappy piece of plastic between them. Of course the crappy piece of plastic was not very durable, so last time we were out sailing one of them got whipped by a sheet and broke off.

OK, so there has been lots of small things that will be better if I get to build a second Journeyman. And some things that were designed wrong but could be easily changed while building. But this collision was not solvable without a major cockpit redesign:

As you can see the handle of the primary winches collides with the upper life line. Moving the winch backwards doesn’t help since the deck area is very narrow here. And if it moves towards the center-line it collides with the handle of the halyard winch. The halyard winch can’t move either, because then the angle from the locks becomes too steep. So… I’ll just have to live with this. If the Journeyman 60 was designed for racing it would be a bad problem, but since it is not, it isn’t. The winch is dual speed, so it can be operated without having the handle go full turns. And the lifeline can be unhooked very quickly using the pelican hook just in front of the handle.

Today was a pretty boring day otherwise. The yard in under big pressure to deliver another boat, so no one is working on the Journeyman. In the end I gave up and starting working on the other boat too, hoping we would get rid of it sooner so I can have the work-force back!

We just put the lifelines in, and in the middle of all delays and small setbacks they are making me very happy. Everything fit perfectly, and the welding work on the pull-pit is absolutely superb.

This image also shows the chainplates for the stay-sail, solent and code zero (actually I will have more of a code 2 for those who are picky with these things). The stainless pull-pit and stanchions are fitted in the deck bases using galvanic insulators made from Delrin.

In this case, the One Ring to Rule Them All is the deck ring. It sits around the mast in the deck, and all halyards, reef lines etc are attached to it. We have one of the best deck ring manufacturers in Sweden: Seldén. So I ordered their largest deck ring a while ago.

Our nice carbon mast does not have any runners, this is an important part in making handling under sail simple. However, as a consequence it is quite wide. So it turns out that the largest available ring is too small for the Journeyman. So we have two alternatives: Build a completely new custom solution, or make the ring larger. We decided to try making the ring larger. This is more difficult than it sounds, because the aluminum in the ring is a casting alloy, quite different from the welding alloys we use. So welding is complicated, and the final result can potentially crack due to different thermal expansion between the two different types of aluminum.

So again: Keep your fingers crossed!

(Oh and in other news, the keel box looks quite promising now, I’ll be back with more news on that in a day or two).

[UPDATE!] The operation was quite successful. Not sure if it was due to your crossed fingers or the skilled fingers of Reimo our welding lord…